Hybrid vehicles often include an electric motor that is powered by a battery pack. The battery pack includes a plurality of individual battery cells or modules that are connected together. Each of the battery cells may include a battery Cell Sensing Board (CSB), which is connected to a respective battery cell, and senses information related to its respective battery cell. Accordingly, the hybrid vehicle will include a plurality of CSB's, with one of the CSB's associated with and/or connected to a respective one of the battery cells. Each of the CSB's is connected to a Battery System Manager (BSM) controller. The BSM controller communicates with and receives information from each of the CSB's, in order to control the operation of the battery pack.
The plurality of CSB's may be arranged in a serial chain with each other, often referred to as a “daisy chain”, and are connected to the BSM controller through a Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART) protocol. Because the CSB's are arranged in the serial chain, if one of the CSB's malfunctions, and is no longer capable of communicating with the BSM controller, then the BSM controller loses communication with all of the CSB's. This is because signals must route through each of the CSB's in turn, from the CSB disposed nearest to the BSM controller in the serial chain, out to the CSB disposed farthest from the BSM controller in the serial chain, and then back to the BSM controller. It is therefore important, when communication between the BSM controller and the CSB's is disrupted, to be able to identify which specific one of the CSB boards is not functioning properly and causing the communication disruption.